A ship graveyard or ship cemetery is a location where the hulls of scrappedships are left to decay and disintegrate, or left in reserve. Such a practice is now less common due to waste regulations and so some dry docks where ships are broken (to recycle their metal and remove dangerous materials like asbestos) are also known as ship graveyards.

By analogy, the phrase can also refer to a large number of shipwrecks which have accumulated in a single area but not been removed by human agency, instead being left to disintegrate naturally. These can form in places where navigation is difficult or dangerous (such as the Seven Stones, off Cornwall, or Blackpool, on the Irish Sea); or where a large number of ships have been deliberately scuttled together (as with the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow); or where a large number of ships have been sunk in battle (such as Ironbottom Sound, in the pacific).